I have no off switch for worry. If there’s any way to chill and let things flow, I can’t find it.

Then there’s Paul, my vanilla-flavored glacier. He can’t envision a reason to push events forward at top speed or sweat about anything.

I don’t get it. Why doesn’t he recognize the value in unnecessary stress? It could be that he sees when I freak out, I’m no less uptight, but it’s more likely that there’s something wrong with him.

Like when I recently submitted a project description to apply for a ten-month memoir-writing class.

I said, “Oh, my God. I’ve waited a year to register for this. I thought I could just sign up. I have to wait for approval. The instructor’s going to scratch her head and wonder how such a moron could belong in her class.”

Paul’s response was as disturbingly calm and predictable as always: “Don’t worry, Sweetie. You’ll get in.”

How naïve.

So I spent sixteen years between August 8 and August 14 waiting to see if I would be accepted. I hit the refresh button on the submissions website seventy times an hour, and it stubbornly said, “Submitted” every time. No “Accepted,” or more sensibly, “Rejected.”

Then came August 14, and the site conceded that indeed I was “Accepted.” This bewildered me, but I was happy. For five minutes.

Then I realized there were probably 40,000 people applying for fifteen seats in the class, and they would all get into the class ten seconds after registration opened the next day.

Starting at 7:00 in the morning on August 15, I began checking the institution’s site, only to find that the “Register” button was available for every class but the one I wanted.

Trying to get any work done while hitting the refresh button every five minutes isn’t easy. Plus after three hours, I imagined that the class’s fifteen seats were full, with a wait list of 39,985 people ahead of me.

So I emailed the school, and they said, “Well, for this class, you have to register by phone. We sent you an email about it.” There was no email in my inbox.

Now my mind was whispering, “This is a special, secret society, and you don’t belong.” Made sense to me.

When I called and told the nice lady that I didn’t receive an email, she said, “The message is in the submissions site, which is a separate program from regular email.”

Of course the site has a separate email system. It’s a secret society. Why hadn’t I thought of that? But maybe I could still get in. I took a deep breath and asked if I could register, and she said, “Sure.” That was easy. Too easy.

Now I’m in the class, but part of me expects to be the accidentally registered sixteenth person, and I’ll be turned away on the first day. Still, that insane part of my mind hopes to be surprised in a pleasant way.

But I think my paranoia may not be a disorder after all. If I hadn’t fretted and sprained my finger hitting the refresh button and then finally asked, “What’s up?” I wouldn’t be in the class. So everything’s fine now.

But what if it’s not? What if my printed confirmation is the product of a random punking scheme? Thank goodness I have thirty-four days to worry about this. Otherwise I’d just have to invent another obsession.

I’m trying to decide if it’s weird that I enjoy planning what will happen after I die, especially because so much of my pleasure is rooted in vengeance.

The last time I updated my estate documents was four years ago, just two weeks before I was scheduled to have a bit of cancer removed from my right kidney (or, as one of my bosses speculated, it was just a wine cork. My surgeon declined to confirm). So that go-round wasn’t as much fun as this time.

I recently reconnected with my cousin Lesli, who has an only daughter, Megan, so now I have blood relatives I actually speak to again. And unlike when I communicate with a couple other members of the family, when I talk to Lesli and Megan, I don’t want to kill myself, which is cool.

Plus this reconnection got me thinking about my will’s provisions if Paul dies before me (which is fairly moot-ish because he’s ten years younger than I am and takes way better care of himself than I do; although we Valleleys have a tendency to just keep living in spite of logic, so things are a tad mentally swirly).

Lesli and I grew up like sisters, which was handy because we’re only children, and Megan is like a niece to me even though we haven’t met yet.

Such is the power of the Internet to render the in-person meeting unnecessary to form relationships. Paul and I put our estate-planning and tax return preparation in the hands of an attorney and an accountant we couldn’t pick out of a line-up, and neither of us thinks it’s all that strange.

The control freak in me likes the idea of dictating my last wishes, and it tries really hard not to imagine anyone not following them. I mean, how would I do anything about it? I hope haunting and poltergeisting are real, just in case.

As for stuff and money, I get to decide who gets what and how much of it. There isn’t a vast empire to begin with, but even if I only had five beans, I’d enjoy the thought that I get to withhold all of them from certain people (and yes, to those two or three people who may have read all of my posts, I’m talking about Paul’s middle and younger brothers, MB and YB).

Maybe I sound petty, but I know those two boys will see everything I own as belonging to them just because I was married to their brother.

I know that because two hours after their father passed, as we were driving YB over to console their stepmother (because, as YB put it, “I’m too much of a delicate flower to drive myself anywhere at this awful time because this shock is affecting me more than anyone else, including Dad’s wife”—I paraphrase), out of nowhere, YB said, “We’d better get over there and divvy up Dad’s stuff.”

No need to offer an anecdote about MB to support my theory. Two peas. One pod. As YB’s girlfriend once described the group (both boys and their girlfriends), “We’re as thick as thieves!” Surgically precise writing.

So yeah, despite how heartbroken they’d be to see me go, I have good reason to believe my death will trigger a plundering that would make the Vikings look like a bunch of pantywaists.

So in addition to denying them a single penny, here’s the part of estate planning that has me cackling and rubbing my hands together like a B-movie villain:

Lesli and Megan are sweet, but they’re also tough people who can—and will, for me—body-block MB and YB from even crossing the threshold after I’m gone.

And I’ve got news from beyond for those two loving, caring lads: Megan is a total martial arts badass, and if they try to get in with their empty boxes and sticky fingers, she will have signed, notarized authorization from me to kick them into the next century.

Now it’s time for spreadsheets and office supply shopping. This is intoxicating. I hope reincarnation’s a real thing. I’d like to believe that I’ll be able to do this again and again throughout eternity.